


A Jump To the Left

by Mirrored_Illusions



Series: 2017 August Fic-A-Day [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Jumper (2008)
Genre: 2017 August Fic-A-Day Challenge, Alternate History, Angst, F/M, Show and tell, Twisting The Hellmouth Fic-a-Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-13 20:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11767356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirrored_Illusions/pseuds/Mirrored_Illusions
Summary: David and Millie get a vampire show-and-tell.





	1. A Jumper and a Slayer

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Anytime post-Chosen, anytime post-film.  
> Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss Whedon. Jumper belongs to Steven Gould, or at least the books do. Either way, none of it belongs to me.  
> Written for the 2017 August Fic-A-Day, Day 10.

David Rice was fast asleep in Hong Kong next to Millie Harris when his cell phone woke him up from a deep sleep. Barely awake he reached out his hand and fumbled in the general direction of the night stand, knocking over several things before he finally got his hand on the offending object.  
  
"Yeah?" He half-mumbled after blindly hitting the 'accept' button on the screen.  
  
"Good morning, Sunshine! This is your friendly neighborhood Slayer calling to inform you that you are fifteen minutes late for your pre-scheduled demonstration of how to kill our local undead Americans!" The voice on the other end of the line sounded way too chipper for his groggy mind. He opened his eyes to slits and peeked at the time. Fifteen minutes past midnight; they'd been asleep for less than 40 minutes. He groaned and the woman on the other end laughed.  
  
"You forgot, didn't you?" Buffy's tone was teasing and not the least bit sympathetic towards his obvious lack of sleep that night.  
  
"We'll be there in 20," he replied and hung up. David closed his eyes and willed his body to cooperate.  
  
"David? Is something wrong?" He turned around and looked at his girlfriend.  
  
"No, I just forgot I had a meeting. *We* have a meeting and I forgot all about it." He got up and disappeared into the bathroom where he took a three-minute shower, mostly to wake himself up. When he got back into the bedroom Millie was waiting for him.  
  
"What meeting?"  
  
"Remember a week ago when I got home with some bruises and I kept avoiding your questions?" She gave him an affirmative reply. "I got into a fight with a group of vampires." He quickly added, "Yes, vampires are real, surprised the heck out of me, too." When he saw her expression.  
  
"Right before one of them was about to bite my neck this skinny little woman showed up out of nowhere and stuck a wooden stake into his heart through his back. And then she began beating them up before staking them one by one. The whole thing was surreal, even for me."  
  
"Vampires are *not* real, David."  
  
Instead of contradicting her he encouraged her to take a quick shower so he could show her the evidence in person, but he knew there would be a long talk in his near future. "Buffy, the little blonde, promised to give me a demonstration tonight since she didn't have time a week ago. I talked her into letting you come along. We were supposed to meet her at midnight."  
  
Millie gave him a disbelieving look but went to get ready. Twenty-two minutes later and David had jumped them from their apartment in Hong Kong and to the outskirts of a graveyard, an old stone church looming against the sky in front of them.  
  
Mille gave the area a quick look before she asked, "So where's this vampire killer of yours?" Before David got a chance to reply, a female voice beat him to it.  
  
"It's Vampire Slayer, not killer. And I'm right here." When the couple turned around they were met by the sight of a slight woman with blonde hair and wearing a pair of leather pants in combination with a sleeveless top in old rose. David greeted her politely while Millie simply stared for a few moments before remembering her own manners.  
  
"I've already staked one vamp tonight but there's another fresh grave over there." She pointed slightly to their left and indicated they should start walking in that direction. "He might not rise until tomorrow night, it depends a little if it takes them one night or three before they rise. Either way, baby vamps are easy so less chance you'll get hurt." By the time she finished talking they were almost to the grave. It proclaimed that Steven Gould was buried there.  
  
"You might want to get comfy, this might take a while." She added when they stopped.  
  
It took the vampire another 32 minutes to start clawing itself out of the grave, one hand at a time. Buffy was tempted to roll her eyes when Millie predictably began to scream before she cut herself off. The three of them spent the next five minutes watching the newly risen vamp climb completely out of what was supposed to be its final resting place.  
  
"This, lady and gentleman, is a vampire. As you can see his face is ridged into his grrr face. His eyes have become yellowish, and his canines have elongated into sharp fangs. Some of a vampires new skill set include; superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes, stamina, and durability. They also have heightened senses of smell, hearing, and night vision. In addition, they have accelerated healing and innate hand-to-hand combat skills. Oh, and they have a kind of immortality." Buffy lectured, just barely refraining from doing so in a bad British accent. Somehow she doubted her current audience would get the joke.  
  
"I say a kind of immortality because they can get killed. Like the fiction says; a wooden stake through the heart, beheading, and sunlight being the most obvious ways to kill them. They can get hurt by crosses and other holy items, but they can enter a church if they feel inclined." She thought for a moment, "Garlic has no effect on them other than giving them bad breath."  
  
As she was about to continue her lecture the vampire finally broke free of the grave dirt and charged her, and Buffy spent the next ten minutes showing off her fighting skills for the visiting couple before she knocked him to the ground, held him down, and handed Millie her stake.  
  
"Would you like to do the honors, my lady?" It was an as good way as any to prove the existence of the undead to a disbeliever.  
  
After a few seconds of staring, and Buffy showing her how to hold the stake with both hands before plunging it into his heart, she completed the deed and the vamp turned to dust right under her hands.  
  
Unsurprisingly what followed was a demand for Buffy to come back to Hong Kong with them so she could explain everything more thoroughly, with a free shopping spree as an added incentive.  
  
Not long after Buffy experienced her first 'jump' as David brought both of them back to the apartment.


	2. A Jumper History Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles give a short history lesson on Jumpers and their involvment with the Old Council.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss Whedon. The Jumper 'verse belongs to Steven Gould and probably someone else who isn't me.
> 
> Written for the 2017 August Fic-A-Day, Day 22.

"Don't you see, Giles? If we can recruit David and other jumpers we'll have a ready-made back-up to get us out of trouble if we need it. Or even if we're just doing something time sensitive. They can just Jumpt us to where we need to go, or somewhere close by, and can save so much time! Especially since I don't think they can be tracked as magicals."  
  
Buffy looked eagerly at her Watcher, actually, he was her former Watcher since he'd taken control of the Watcher's Council, but she still went to him when she needed help. Much to the frustration of her new Watcher, who was probably starting to feel pretty inadequate by now.  
  
Instead of looking interested in her proposition he gave her a weary and slightly upset look in return to her pitch. That did not bode well for her plans, but at least Faith, Willow, and Xander had the right reaction and joined in with excited babbling and questions.  
  
"Enough!" Buffy, Faith, Willow, and Xander, plus a few of the present Watchers all gave the Head of the Defender's Council a slightly startled look and slightly wide eyes. This conversation didn't warrant that reaction, after all.  
  
"Listen, Buffy. The Council is aware of Jumpers. The knowledge goes back centuries to when a young Slayer befriended a young orphaned girl who turned out to be a Jumper.The Jumper, the file simply identify her as 'D.H.', saved the Slayer of the time repeatedly. The Watcher didn't report this to the Council until this Slayer had been killed and he was able to give them the report in person.  
  
"Naturally, the Council was upset by this news, partially when he told them he didn't know where the girl had gone. According to the file, she had returned the body of her friend, apologized to the Watcher for failing to save her and then Jumped away."  
  
"That doesn't sound so bad, G-Man." Faith interrupted. "The was grieving and left to take care of it on her own."  
  
The look Giles gave the Dark Haired Slayer was a mixture of pity and impatience. "The Council expected to have total control of the Slayer and all Potentials in their custody. They also expected to be told of anyone who might find out about the supernatural, particularly if they had any unusual abilities.  
  
Giles inhaled and exhaled a few times to calm himself down before he continued. The others, who were still a little wide-eyed at his sudden annoyance, remained silent while he collected himself.  
  
"Long story short; things did not end well. They managed to find and temporarily detain several of these individuals, however, H.D. remained outside of their reach. After a few years, they decided the continuation of Jumpers were an affront to their existence and a 'kill on sight' order was given. A separate group was created to deal with this abomination as they appeared to be human rather than demonic."  
  
Buffy decided now was a good time to interrupt when he stopped to draw breath. "Woah, hold your horses! David is not an abomination! He's definitely all human." She stopped to rewind Giles' little history lesson. "Does this mean the group still exist?" David hadn't mentioned that.  
  
"Yes, they're called Paladins. They separated themselves from the Council over a century ago due to a more religious view of the matter and have since operated on their own. Though they kept an open link back to the Council."  
  
"And the Council allowed the separation?" At Giles' confirmation, Xander added, "But what about them wanting total control?"  
  
"There has never been a Slayer or Potential with this particular ability, at least not that the Council is aware of. However, they might be have been someone who simply hid the ability, instinctively know it would be quite bad to reveal it. The records show at least Slayers who were in regular contact with at least one Jumper, if not more. The latter three were all killed by the Council. Two by making it impossible for them to survive the Cruciamentum, and one was unceremoniously shot in the back of the head by her own Watcher for 'treason'."  
  
Buffy and Faith immediately began talking over each other until Giles got them to stop before he allowed Faith to express her views first.  
  
"They killed them for gettin' help to kill demons or because the Council just didn't want anyone but them to help the Slayer?"  
  
"Both. You have to remember that most Council members didn't see the Slayer as a human being with feelings and opinions of their own. All she was to them was an expendable soldier who would be replaced by another one immediately upon death."  
  
The meeting went downhill from there, but in the end, Buffy and Faith gave themselves permission to gather more information to present at another meeting. Meanwhile, Giles and the other Watchers would gather all the information the Council had on the phenomena. They agreed to reconvene in one month to present their case and see if they could come to a conclusion regarding these people and if they would be worth working with.  
  
With any luck, David and Millie would be willing to share information, and maybe even introduce them to other Jumpers. It was worth a try, especially as it could prolong the lives of some of their Slayers and other people who worked with them.


	3. Trial By Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The New Council decide to give David a six month trial period.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss Whedon. The Jumper 'verse belongs to Steven Gould and probably someone else who isn't me.
> 
> Note: Written for the 2017 August FaD, Day 31 (and we're done!).  
> Note 2: This is definitely meh, but my brain is fried.

The meeting a month after Buffy presented her proposal had been interesting, not because it had been informative but because of the lack of it. David hadn't been able to tell her much outside of his own experiences and then what he'd been told by the few Jumpers he had met and actually had a chance to talk with. The Old Council's observations and few facts had been lacking, to say the least. The records mostly consisted of H.D.'s Watcher's diary, and those books had been drier than the Sahara. The subsequent Slayers on record who had had contact with Jumpers were spare on anything informative. The interviews and observations the Watchers had of the captured Jumpers didn't reveal anything new. It was, for the most part, a record of all the kinds of demons they weren't and exactly how human they were if you ignored their ability to Jump.  
  
Giles had proven to be a little prejudiced against this group of people, mainly because he'd been raised to believe they were abominations akin to demons and therefore needed to be killed. He did, however, admit that having a Jumper on the teams with the most dangerous assignments would be exceptionally beneficial. The number of lives it could save was... It could save so many; it could extend the lives of the Slayers just by being able to get them to a hospital or infirmary quickly. The only thing that would've been better was someone with the ability to heal.  
  
In the end, they had agreed to a trial period of six months. David would be on call for Buffy and Faith's teams and would join them on the more dangerous ones, so he could Jump them out of there if it was needed. Or simply get them inside without being discovered. Because of this those teams never consisted of more than four people total. Not because David couldn't Jump any more people, but because the more people involved the easier someone would be left behind accidentally. They still had a problem believing he'd managed to Jump an entire floor when he was desperate a few years back.  
  
But, now it was time to test the theory in a trial by fire, and it was a literal fire. A group of some kind of fire demons was planning to take out the world by setting all the oil reserves on fire along with any other flammable liquids and related material. They needed an effective way to get past the various fire-related traps and other barriers. Their Intel was a little shaky, demon informants were notoriously unreliable after all, but there had been over a dozen unrelated demons who had literally walked up to various Slayers and given them bits of information on the upcoming apocalypse. Because, as they had found out before, most demons and vampires actually wanted the world to keep spinning and disliked that someone was trying to wreck their home – and in many cases their bountiful food source.  
  
"Ready?"  
  
"You know, my life was relatively peaceful before I met you. Except for the Paladins, but aside from a few dust-ups and a major blow-out, it hasn't really been that bad. Then you come along with your vampires and your demons and your witches. Now I'm standing outside the deliberately burning hideout of a demon clan, preparing to help you kill them." David wasn't really upset, but Buffy was certain that he didn't entirely approve of the deviation from his pleasant lifestyle of stolen money and living the high life with the love of his life.  
  
She'd taken him on some patrols in various cemeteries and graveyards, just to get him used to the idea of vampires being the real thing. In return, he had Jumped her around the world to see the sights so she could get used to the sensation of Jumping and how to react to it. Then she's taken him along to slay demons, and even introduced him to some of the neutral and friendlier ones. His reaction to the latter ones had been entertaining, to say the least.  
  
"Smile, you're about to take part in world saveage!" Buffy grinned at him and gave him her arm so he could Jump her inside the HQ. It had been decided that only Buffy and David would enter the headquarters, while several other teams would intercept and kill anyone who tried to escape.  
  
The actual fight wasn't all it could've been; Buffy fought and Slayed her way inside while David used his ability to great effect and beheaded a number of demons with a sword he'd borrowed, his targets were mostly demons who tried to sneak up on the Slayer while she was busy introducing some other demons to her shiny Scythe. Both of them 'allowed' quite a few of them to escape out of the HQ and right into the waiting arms of their backup teams.  
  
It wasn't a major apocalypse, it was the wrong time of year for one thing, but it could still have destroyed everything, including their entire planet. And when the two of them Jumped back to the other side of the barrier after a nearly anti-climactic battle inside, it was nearly a relief to see the horde of demonic back-up the fire demons had gathered there and Buffy cheerfully threw herself into the fight along side Faith.  
  
It was a good while before all the demons were either dead or fleeing into the night, but all the Slayers got a proper workout and in some cases their debut in averting an apocalypse. The ones who managed to escape was a minority, but by experience, it was the weaker ones. The ones who wouldn't pose a problem on their own, but instead acted as muscle for some big cheese who was dominant enough to get their 'loyalty'.  
  
When they came back to their own headquarters and debriefed Giles and the other Watchers it was decided the mission was a success and the experiment would run its course, but it had tentatively been given the go-ahead unless something unexpected happened to change their minds.


End file.
